The Journal of Social Policy believes that research articles should contain sufficient information to allow others to understand, verify and replicate new findings and that sharing data can help to improve the impact of research. Therefore wherever possible, we encourage authors to make resources such as data, materials, protocols and software code available to readers without undue barriers to access.

Authors should also adhere to any additional requirements that may apply to them in the policies of their research funders and host institutions.

When and how resources should be made available

Where possible, resources should be made publicly accessible by the time of publication.

There are three ways in which resources can be made available:

1. In the article. Data and methods can be included in the journal article itself.
2. As supplementary information. Resources that do not fit within the journal article itself can be included as supplementary information files, hosted by the journal. These will be available to peer-reviewers but will not be copy edited or otherwise modified before publication.
3. Deposition in community resources. Resources can also be placed in appropriate external repositories and a link included within the article. See additional guidance below, for more information.

Any restrictions on the availability of resources should be reasonable, such as through material transfer agreements or charges applied to cover distribution costs. If resources are commercially distributed, then this should be indicated in the published article.

JSP assumes no responsibility for the data uploaded to external repositories. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the data are usable, the files uncorrupted and for any eventual questions from scholars wishing to replicate the data work.

Additional guidance

• Specialised repositories that are recognised by the academic community as key tools for particular types of data should be used whenever possible (an author’s personal or departmental website would not offer the stable, long-term preservation offered by a repository). Generalist repositories, which can host a wide variety of data types, should be used if no specialised repository exists: examples are Dryad, Zenodo, Dataverse and the Open Science Framework.
• If you need guidance in preparing qualitative data for sharing, we suggest you consult the Qualitative Data Repository or the guidance for preparing data from ICPSR.
• A list of protected access repositories (where confidential data can be stored and managed) is available here.
• Guidance on anonymising data is available from the Qualitative Data Repository